The Student Government Association and GW Disabled Students Collective held a joint town hall meeting Tuesday night, where students voiced concerns about malfunctioning residence hall elevators and the need for greater disability awareness among faculty.
SGA Sen. Jacob Wilner (CCAS-U) and Alex Radt, the DSC events coordinator, hosted the meeting, which featured six panelists including Director of Disability Support Services Rochelle Mills and Director of Campus Living and Residential Education Joe Paulick. About 12 students and faculty gathered in the University Student Center Grand Ballroom to share their thoughts on building accessibility, citing malfunctioning elevators in Mitchell Hall and a lack of open seating for students with disabilities in campus dining halls.
Students who registered for the event through an RSVP anonymously submitted questions prior to the meeting about campus accessibility concerns, including issues with the elevator in Mitchell Hall, which has not been operating since the fall semester, according to students.
Adam Aaronson, the associate vice president of GW Facilities, said Mitchell Hall does not currently comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which guarantees equal opportunities for disabled people in education and transportation. He said GW Facilities has ordered the necessary parts, and the elevator is expected to be functioning in March.
Radt said they could no longer access Mitchell Hall to visit friends living in the residence hall as a wheelchair user because of the lack of functioning elevators.
“When we’re doing work in buildings like elevator modernization, like we’re doing in Mitchell, we do work with the housing department to try to find the best schedule that’s going to have the least impact on the building,” Aaronson said. “Sometimes, parts take a long time to get in, and the work is just unfortunately not quick.”
Paulick said Mitchell Hall will be closed during the 2025-26 school year so officials can renovate the building to be ADA accessible. He said the University will make additional singles available in Strong Hall and 2109 F Street to accommodate the closure.
Attendees expressed concerns about accessibility in the dining halls, noting that the reserved tables that are marked as accessible seating in Shenkman and Thurston dining halls are often blocked by chairs, making it difficult for wheelchair users to use the tables.
Matt Thompson — the vice president of operations of Compass Group, GW’s food service provider — said the addition of turnstiles in Shenkman and Thurston dining halls in place of staff will allow the staff to be more active around the dining halls and help students move tables when necessary.
“I think sometimes we have incidents where, frankly, people put chairs there and aren’t being mindful of what that space is supposed to be for,” Thompson said.
Students are entitled to accommodations if they are approved by DSS but wait times for receiving approval for DSS accommodations have been historically long, according to students from DSC who attended the meeting. Mills said she started her role at GW in January 2024 and has since noticed the long wait times and received complaints from students about the lack of timely responses from the office.
Mills said the current DSS website is “outdated” and requires staff to manually input information, which slows down the approval process for students who request DSS accommodations.
Mills announced at the meeting that the DSS office will start using a new automated Accessible Information Management database, which she said will make it easier for her staff to work through the DSS applicant process because they will no longer have to go through every application manually. She said the database is set to launch May 19.
To further streamline the process, Mills said DSS removed “outdated” language from their website, which required students to present documentation of a diagnosis in order to apply for DSS accommodations. She said these barriers might have deterred students from applying in the first place.
“We have much more of a welcoming statement, saying, even if you maybe don’t have a diagnosis yet, or you’re not sure what type of documentation you need, you can still apply,” Mills said.
Molly St. Clair contributed reporting.